Unspouse My House helps the newly single
Unspouse My House host helps clients ‘start fresh’ and imagine a bright new future
Getting over an ex can be a roller coaster of emotions, and that’s especially true if you continue to live in the home you once shared. How can you truly move on when reminders of your former love are everywhere, like the quirky paint colour she chose for the bedroom or the tattered armchair he sat in to watch sports?
In HGTV’s new series, Unspouse My House, interior designer Orlando Soria uses his design skills, trademark sense of humour and personal experience to help clients make over their hearts while making over their homes.
Even if you haven’t suffered a traumatic breakup, you can empathize with the loneliness, rejection and depression they’re feeling, he assures.
“My goal isn’t to erase the ex, because that’s impossible. My goal is to take away triggers that might make people feel badly on a dayto-day basis. Sometimes you look at things every day and don’t even realize that they’re reminding you of your breakup,” Soria says. “The cleansing part is about taking away some visual cues that are tying you to the past.”
Perhaps you never even liked some of the things that are triggering you but accepted them into your home in the spirit of compromise with your former partner. As for pieces you still love, you might want to put them in storage or entrust them to a friend until your heart mends.
Soria confesses he’s perfected the art of getting dumped. That’s why he’s passionate about helping his clients find the silver lining in their breakup.
“One of the positive things is that it’s a time to reinvent yourself, start fresh and think about who you are.”
Part of that is identifying your personal design esthetic and deciding what you like and want in your home.
“That’s actually a lot easier to explore on your own because when you’re with a partner, you constantly have to consider their views,” he says. “There are some opportunities in a breakup that you don’t have in a relationship and that’s what I’m trying to help people find.”
In one episode, Soria worked with Kille just six months after her divorce. The mother of three had always loved mid-century style but her ex wasn’t a fan. She was especially excited to bid farewell to her kitchen — what she referred to as a “brown, beige purgatory.” He also updated her home office, transformed her bland bedroom with a bold pink paint and helped her declutter.
“Part of design is about making sure things are going to look good and that there’s enough storage space so it looks good on a daily basis, so there’s a practicality to it,” Soria says.
In another episode, he worked with Paul about eight years after his divorce. His ex’s country style was evident in every room and he had incorporated bachelor pad touches like two TVs on a living room wall — one of which wasn’t even hooked up — and stacked boxes for bedside tables. Soria fixed up the living room, kitchen and master bedroom.
“The ideal time to unspouse your house is different for everybody, but I would say you should tackle it earlier rather than later,” he says.
A breakup almost always results in some sort of practical, logistical problem that needs to be solved. “You shared a home with a partner and down the road he takes half the furniture or leaves all the furniture that you hated or you have to move to a new place and you have no furniture.”
Not only does tackling a redesign take your mind off the pain of the breakup, it forces you to think about the future as you answer questions like: What am I going to do in this space? Who am I going to be in here with? What kind of bed do I need for my guest bedroom? Who’s going to come stay here?
“It’s all about thinking about the future and not about the past. The worst part of a breakup is that you’re obsessing over the past,” says Soria. “Part of the process is trying to imprint these people’s personalities onto their homes and in doing that increase their self-esteem and feeling of power over their own homes … It may seem like a superficial thing but having a beautiful space helps you imagine having a new beautiful life.”
The cleansing part is about taking away some visual clues that are tying you to the past.